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Saturday, July 17, 2021

Today In Socio-Politics

You may have seen during the past week the results of a  Economist-YouGov poll. Zhou is put at a 49% approval rating. However, as usual, the devil is in the details. Those details are probed at AmThinker this morning: Poll-dancing: Is Biden really at 49 percent approval? Follow the link for the details, but here's a spoiler--the internals of the poll are as skewed as you'd expect. The takeaway is that Zhou's approval is likely significantly lower.

The amount of demographic jiggering that pollsters have to engage in is probably a result of the changing political landscape. Earlier this week Victor Davis Hanson observed:


The two parties are switching class constituents. Some 65% of the Americans making more than $500,000 a year are Democrats, and 74% of those who earn less than $100,000 a year are Republicans, according to IRS statistics.


With that kind of switch going on, it's getting harder and harder for pollsters to get the results they want.

Other developments also draw that level of approval into question. For example ...

The Washington Examiner reports that:


Virtually all people in the United States, 88%, believe inflation is here to stay and will soar more, continuing a troubling trend under [Zhou].

...

As a result, many are bummed out and ready to sock it to politicians. The hashtag #Bidenflation has been trending recently.


The notion that 49% of the public approve of the WH occupant who is bringing them this level of inflation is difficult to accept.

Here's another consideration. Virtually every day we're seeing increasing unrest on the part of parents, who are upset with the way government schools are being run--especially as indoctrination camps. The persons responsible for this deplorable state of affairs in government schools are closely identified with the Dem party. Now, over the past months we've witnessed strenuous efforts on the part of the Zhou regime to control and shape public knowledge of what's going on in their communities through influencing social media--the MSM following regime talking points is a given. This past week the regime's spokesman openly admitted that it is pressuring Facebook to ban individuals whose views conflict with those of the regime. While the topic under discussion at the time was Covid, is there anyone who doubts that regime pressure extends to other topics as well--such as CRT in their schools?

The legal point here--and the remarkable stupid aspect of the regime's flaunting of their efforts at censorship--is this. While Facebook and Twitter are private companies and, in the current legal environment, are free to censor their platforms, that all changes when the government gets involved. It is illegal for the government to pressure private parties to do things that the government cannot legally do itself. Thus, it becomes illegal government censorship when the regime pressures Facebook and Twitter to ban persons who disagree with government policy positions. Which is exactly what the regime has admitted that they're doing. Note in the second tweet below the reference to Zhou's bizarre claim that Facebook is publishing "disinformation" that is "killing people."




You can read more on point commentary at Red State--Jen Psaki Gets Caught up in Her Own Call to Ban 'Misinformation'. The point is that the notion of the Zhou regime as the guardian of First Amendment protected speech is as disingenuous as the notion of George Bergoglio as the guardian of tradition. In each case we see the same totalitarian willingness of the Left to lie and to deform institutions for whatever purpose they have in mind.

Finally, Don Surber has a post that draws a number of stories together--something I appreciate. However, Surber's take on these stories--Let them drop out--is one that shocks me (and, yes, I think Surber was riffing off the NAACP firebrandess who advocates letting CRT opponents "die").

Here's what's going on.

Joanne Jacobs has a blog post entitled Teens choose jobs over high school, college. If you're guessing that the teens making this choice are male and minority, then you're guessing right:

Locked out of high school in Memphis, Hispanic boys are working construction jobs and taking pride in helping support their families, reports Chalkbeat’s Ian Round.

Will they return to finish high school diplomas or follow up on plans to attend community college? Probably not, says José Ayala, a college student and a counselor for Streets Ministries.


I've been warning about this for months, and was urging that Trump should have made this an issue in Election 2020. It was always pretty much a no-brainer that when the government teachers unions locked the kids out of school, those who were least scholastically inclined--which is a pretty significant percentage of the total--would tune out and drop out. In other words, they would never return. Who thinks in this day of BLM that they police are going to be sent out to round up 'truants'? Not happening. In minority-majority schools this could amount to a major portion of all students becoming former students. Choosing jobs? No doubt some will, but others will choose the gangsta lifestyle and will be out shooting up the cities. Oh, yeah, that seems to be happening. If these young boys were mostly seeking jobs, why are jobs going begging?

And what qualifications do these kids have for any real sorts of jobs? This story that Surber also cites tells you what you probably already knew about their job prospects: Baltimore City Schools: 41% of high school students earn below 1.0 GPA. In a time of rampant grade inflation--I suppose that would be called 'grade equity' now--what does that tell you? It tells me that you're likely talking about functional illiteracy.

This is what I find so shocking about Surber's rather flip response. To me, turning out a functionally illiterate mob of kids onto the streets to--maybe--look for jobs is the height of irresponsibility. But then we are talking about Leftist government teachers unions, aren't we? And meanwhile we're importing millions more who will end up swelling the ranks of the young and restless.

Yet here's what Surber writes:


College is expensive and anymore is geared toward women. An accusation is a woman needs to get an ex-boyfriend expelled for rape.

Why should young men go into debt when they can get a job, get a car, and get a girl without the hassle of being accused of rape when they break up?

As for high-school dropouts, they help themselves and their schools by eliminating someone who does not want to be there. A GED at 18 is just as good as a diploma, especially as they have been downgraded to a certificate of faithful attendance. 


Turning the schools over entirely for the purpose of Leftist indoctrination of girls, while feral males roam the streets? As if these young men are really going to get a GED at any point in their subsequent lives? Surber seems to me to be advocating for the ratification of all the worst Dem social policy failures since Lyndon Johnson. And we know that those policies were designed to enslave blacks to the Dem party, not to help them.

Fortunately, I suspect that parents across the country will realize what's going on. I just hope the GOP will start speaking out.


17 comments:

  1. "I just hope the GOP will start speaking out."

    I admire your hope over experience here, but the GOP has left generations of urban blacks to be destroyed by Dems. 2,000 of the nation's 20,000 high schools account for 50% of the dropouts, yet GOP hasn't been able to sell school choice to the demographic most impacted? It apparently never occurs to the GOP that the percentage of blacks who still vote Democrat care about their kids still (at least the mothers do--Lord knows where the fathers are). After 50 or 60 years of urban failure Dems can still count on the black vote. The GOP couldn't sell firewater to the Indians.

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    1. "After 50 or 60 years of urban failure Dems can still count on the black vote."

      A little pushback here quig. Given what we now know about the depth and audacity of electoral rigging in so called Blue Cities, i don't think any of us can say that voters in any of these cities actually "vote" for these insane policies. The Oligarchy has shaped our perception that Blue Cities (and black voters in particular) vote Blue 98% of the time so we never question election results that, mirabile dictu, conform to the perception. You see, cheating and rigging election results is child's play once you have convinced everyone of the results beforehand. (That's why, by the way, it was so important for the Oligarchs to put out the narrative in both 2016 and 2020 that Hillary and Sleepers were running away with the election, including a plethora of phony polls and fake news).

      The war we are in is an information war. Polling, focus groups, fake news, false flag events...all of it is designed to convince us of a narrative the oligarchs need us to buy into. The good news is that most Americans are decidedly NOT buying.

      Gint

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    2. Fair enough. So what percentage of the black vote do you think Dems actually receive? Only 80%? 70%? I get your point--that the long-accepted assertion makes obscuring a lower reality possible. I would counter, however, that there is far more than anecdotal, non-election-based evidence of a very outsized black Dem vote. You just do not see anything analogous to BLM, Nation of Islam, NAACP on the right side of the black America. On the right side you do not see black pastors leading marches after-church to the polls where the results show overwhelming GOP votes. You do not see community organizers on the right pushing the message and registration drives. You do not see an anti-Stacey Abrams working the right side of the aisle.

      I get your point, but I think that it's at least mildly delusional to suggest that the Dem black vote isn't a very large majority given the overwhelming preponderance of independent corroborating data points.

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    3. What independent data quig?

      All the things you cite-- BLM, Nation of Islam, etc..-- are teeny numbers overall. This is classic info warfare and marxist tactics where relatively few people take advantage of an outsized megaphone to appear bigger and more influential than reality.

      I don't deny that the black community is affected by the same psy ops as whites. Blacks have been conned into thinking it's race treason to vote non Democrat (God forbid being a Republican). In the same way that large numbers of voters refused to admit voting for Trump, many black voters pay lipservice to the party operatives who make loyalty a litmus test of blackness. That is why there is no concomitant BLM on the right. The black community has been enslaved by a deception campaign that mires them in apathy or hopelessness. But Trump started to shake them out of it and it started with black men. Another reason why the Oligarchy had to remove him by any means. You did start to see black men coming out for Trump. That's how preference cascades begin.

      I am asking us all to question all our assumptions. We have been conned by so many things. It is far from delusional to suspect that voting in Blue Cities is largely rigged and most eligible black voters don't bother to vote because they learned long ago that it's all fixed and nothing will change.Why bother?

      What's the real percentage of black voters for Democrats you ask? About the same as with the larger population. 10 to 20% are true supporters who go out and vote enthusiastically. Another 20% or so vote apathetically, maybe because they directly benefit from Dem largesse (union, govt job). The rest mostly don't vote because they've given up. We cant know the real numbers because the gangsters invent this stuff mostly out of thin air. The problem most of us have in accepting this is that it necessarily means that most of what we've grown up believing and relying upon in terms of news, factual sources, and polling is a lie. Our problem now is figuring out who to trust and where the bedrock lies. Shifting sand is a lousy place to build.

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  2. The GOP couldn't sell firewater to the Indians, while the GOP sits back, and watches the Dems succeed in selling snowballs to Eskimos, and the Koran to Catholics.
    Alas, most of this may be moot, if the DS etc. have a slew of ploys in their arsenal (to e.g. justify postponing the 2022 election), and if the GOP brass continues to lay in the tall grass, instead of having a huge cow vs. what Psaki is boasting about.
    The Dems will continue to lie, and to deform institutions, until they see *clear* downside for them having done so.
    Had such boasting taken place in, say, the days of Goldwater and Frank Church, the bipartisan pushback would've likely been deafening.

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  3. Selling snowballs to Eskimos, the Koran to Catholics, and pork to Orthodox Jews.
    And, recall that the GOP brass and legislators laid in the tall grass, instead of having a huge cow vs. *months* of lockdowns, even of schools w/ kids all-but totally immune from the virus.

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    1. I don't know... Perspective maybe?... but the GOP seems to be REALLY good at selling themselves as defenders of corrupted governments, protectors of faulty elections in states they control, getting others to believe abdication of anything conservative is still somehow "conservative".

      All while getting everyone to blame the democrats for it!!!

      Sorry, couldn't resist!

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  4. Not so sure how concerned Facebook and Zukerbug are after spending 1/3 of a billion dollars to get Joe elected.
    86/46 He ain’t.

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  5. One son just finished master's in accounting and other son starting welding classes. I wish Trump could have accomplished more, but parents have got to stop buying garbage being sold over college education. And also, when kids say they're not going to college upon HS graduation - please, folks praise them! It is so hard for these kids not to feel like failures.

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    1. @Bronwyn, I agree with you. We can castigate the morally daft and intellectually bankrupt college professors until the end of days, but the parents are the real problem. They sign on, they write the checks, they believe. The second parents came to their senses over what was actually going on in universities, passing for education would be the second this nonsense stops. Professors can be liars, dopes and second-raters. But it's the parents who are swimming around in Kool-
      Aid.

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    2. For accounting the trick is get a job with the big 4. Understand how the interview process works.

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    3. He did. We’re proud if him!

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  6. Bronwyn, the junior college I attended years ago offered what amounted to two tracks: college prep and certificate programs in trades and professions. The college prep kids found themselves being picked up by four year colleges/universities and often offered full scholarships. (We had one in our family.) The certificat program kids were trained for two years in construction trades (they built a home each year which was sold at the end of their course); auto mechanis (again, highly sought after upon completion) and others. For women, cosmetology (high demand for those who completed course), dental hygiene (a competitive two year course whose completers were also in high demand) and so on.

    It is probable that your welder son ends up making far more money and enjoying his job far more than the accountant… Good for you and your family!

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  7. I wonder what the real numbers are for trust in science…
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/republican-confidence-science-collapses

    I feel like I’m reading Pravda, trying to read between the lines to get to the truth, with anything from the main stream media.

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  8. I know a handyman that is probably making 2-3 times what a Phd working as an adjunct at a UC is.

    Good plumbers and ac people care in high demand.

    The trick is avoid drugs (huge issue in the construction field), keep married, and learn how to get clients.

    For those going to college. Pick the major, then the college. Look at salaries and employment for graduates. If possible, use online classes and a 2 year college to reduce costs.

    My daughter graduated in 3 years and went to a state school, and then got a job with a big 4 that was a gold stamp on her resume. And she graduated with no student loans, my family could afford her state tuition. My daughter was admitted to two UC’s, but the choice of majors was horrible at the under graduate level. So she went to the top ranked cal state.

    Working for the government is another excellent career path. They have these things called pensions and job security I heard rumors of, but never saw in private industry.

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    1. I'll bet those handymen and plumbers and ac people can read, write, and do 'rithmetic. 41% of HS 'students' in BA ... that could be a different story.

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    2. It's been ten years since I hired any college graduates, but I can tell you that the resumes were frequently disqualifying outright, let alone their inability to communicate clearly in the English language. I imagine that, if anything, things have gotten worse.

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